OK, what about an upgrade which is just a secret. 80 euros. Can only be applied by us over here, so has to come along with all of the other upgrades.

What it does is this :

It makes all what is supposed to sound rock steady, just that. Envision a higher key metal string of a spanish guitar, no vibrato applied. No movement of the guitar. That sound.Or a better one, but you probably never ran into that : a fairly high pitched bell but now with zero resonance. You will know the resonant sound from the larger (church) bell because of the deformation of the bell itself which interacts with itself (like a cymbal actually).

I am now thinking of the not-coincidental expression we have in dutch for this : snaarstrak. Maybe someone knows a good translation in English. Although the word "string" (snaar) is in it, it does not necessarily refer to strings as such, and the expression is merely used for race drivers and how well they take all the bends on the circuit, no error to be seen. Also, in dutch we use it for drummers; how well-timed they hit the gear.It is exactly about this.

So yes, you can just as well think this is about less jitter. But if you find out what the application is for real, then you will frown. And by guarantee not because you think about wasted money. You will merely think : this alone is worth the money of a new expensive DAC.

I must put it forward like this because else you will not be able to know which upgrade causes what sound. Also, this one can not be reversed by you, so you can not compare (unlike the B'ASS which can be configured so you have the original gain stage, of the Phisolator which can be bypassed).

Let me additionally tell that by now so many puzzle pieces come together that the last bits go very fast. Or fit better if you like. So :The phenomenon of the bells I already announced for the B'ASS in a fairly early stage; this is about their loudness or better : the possibility to be that. This can also be translated to : no bell at all at first, and listen now how it ever could have been burried - that loud. But that is just the B'ASS.What this secret upgrade does - or allows for, is the super control of all of the music. But this now works in conjunction with the Phisolator which makes all so bloody fast while the B'ASS is able to follow that - just think being over powered with a rocket motor while you will drive at a speed of 50 miles/hour anyway. Now think about that motor, meant to react superfast to everything because the motor is so "strong" but use that motor to keep very very straight (line) because it can react fast because of ultra high resolution control and never overshoot because so strong. This is still Phisolator + B'ASS (in that sequence) ...

What lacks is the ultra fast feedback to that ultra high resolution because we need to know instantly when the vehicle goes off track. That is, virtually, this upgrade.(technically the story is very different but I hope to explain by this means what you will notice from this secret upgrade)

What's more "strange" to explain without you having heard it, is that from all together (and I am convinced this is just the combination of all three again) especially drummers suddenly do all kind of sneaky things in between. They hit this and underway that. The that was just not there all the time. Poor drummers.But fairly similar can be heard in guitars, because of the impossibility to go silently from the one chord to the other. Thus, because the guitar player just can't, he explicitly puts something in between. Btw I do similar with the keyboard, only because my hand moves along the keys up to an octave further, so why not touch something underway while you're there (pass there) anyway (the drummer example).

These all are examples of the "1000 things" more you will now hear, but they are in such an explicit realm that it makes me think that I can not bring it across. So say that 1/3 of those 1000 is for example about oscillation of the bass guitar amplifier you can now so clearly hear and which is about noises in general (caughing of audience falls in that category, walking on the stage - brushes sounding louder - same) ... but that other 2/3 is way more interesting because it is about the music itself. So envision : if first the electric guitar sounds "super straight" then it becomes 100% easy to perceive each deviation from that straight which now has to be a musical element. And yesterday ? yesterday that straightness was not there in the first place and besides this aspect was not (music) reality, the nuances could not be heard because of (fake) nuances all over in the first place.

Hey Peter, this sounds really interesting... and just what my new SET/speaker setup is in need of. I love the ease and smoothness of the sound I now have, but it'd be great to have a little (lot?) more 'kick'.

I am now thinking of the not-coincidental expression we have in dutch for this : snaarstrak. Maybe someone knows a good translation in English.

The only expression/word that springs to mind is 'taut'. I can imagine describing the steering of a go-kart as 'taut' compared to a regular road car (VJ may disagree ). But it doesn't seem to totally capture the meaning of your Dutch word...

80 Euros for a Black Magic audio tweak with the suggested improvements that's quite a bargain these days. I salivate at the thought to hear the music that is hidden in the music so count me in immediately!

You sound pretty confident on this one. Is there really no need for the usual five day real-or-fake-cool-off period?

Coen, I expected something of that order, because of my mentioned "yesterday". But this was figurative. I am using this myself for about 2 weeks now.

The story is even slightly different because the first 4 days I used it with another configuration setting of the B'ASS and things really went bananas so to speak. Say that I should choose for that combination (I will explain the config settings in due time of course) but commercially that is not justified. So envision that I personally (probably) like that combination the best, but it is so exaggerated that your wife would not like it. It is extreme exploiration of audio capabilities of 2018 (haha). Anyway, you and everybody can try it just the same and if you have in mind my message from yesterday about the B'ASS G3 now working, think the 2nd harmonic doing these extreme things (but works out like that with SE/RCA interlink connection only because otherwise (balanced) this 2nd is surpressed to "nothing").

The difference with these upgrades is so extreme that you can only think that in one of them - or all - things are completely broken. And Coen, you by now know what kind of music I like. Now envision that from the one setting to the next you dare to bet a 1000+ that it is not the same track. You never even heard it before in your life. Still it is the same ...

I dare guarantee that nobody heard such a difference between all the D/A converters they ever auditioned or owned. And all you do is change 4 jumpers from position. Really. And of course the "new" setting is the better one by a century of audio development difference.As said, it is the combination of all of the three upgrades. And I think I ran out of time or lust to try out difference XXHighEnd settings.

Sounds like you have found the path from High Fidelity to Hyper Fidelity. A fascinating development. I appreciate the audio technicalities but does it also serve the musical immersion or are we in for a totally new experience?

I thought to first listen again, more explicitly for your (implied) quest of/for audio life;

At listening for these things I first thought of something that came to my mind a few days ago : there is no judgement to be left in your brain about things as "is this music or is this gadget ?" - and then in the same realm of not being able to judge whether someone sings too loud or whatever because your brain maps it to "but he/she is singing through a microphone and someone set the level of that in relation to the remainder of the music and thus, why think about it in the first place ?". These things keep on happening suddenly. So they are noticed all right, but can be justified by something which is not bad (in your system). And this is not because I want that or like to think that because being rid of a problem ... I am not like that. But it sure is something new and regarding that a totally new experience indeed.

You maybe can also call this infinit tolerance. And I must say (or did I already somewhere ?) that it feels a bit lile vinyl which is hard to go wrong; it can be such good and so bad, but you will accept it without further thinking, unless you have a reference of your yesterday's turn table which clearlly sounded better and you want to revert to that, but that is all.

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but does it also serve the musical immersion or are we in for a totally new experience?

Why not both ?I feel that my explanation above already leads to your musical immersion because you are not destracted by anything. And somehow I feel that this could be a reason for the non-foottapping although I make it up on the spot : we might need sufficient focus to experience all what causes foottapping and with too much distraction we just can't ? There's more to it of course like ... nah, ectually it is an example : Already a few week ago I told about the impossibility to not understand (hear) the lyrics. Now what if you only get half of it ? I am sure that the other half causes a lot of extra processing in our brains and that's distraction. Anyway, without understanding all of the lyrics foottapping can be there just the same, but what if we go back 10 years and understand nothing of it, hence too few words can be heard/understood to even attempt understanding the whole message ? now no brain processing is in order (I'd say).

Everybody will have a set of albums he regularly plays. In my case this is limited to 800-1000 because they are in my Nice Stuff and Demo (the latter is "nice tracks" only). Only once in a while a new album is added which will be because I don't give myself too much of time to explore new things. Anyway, I play these albums with "nice tracks" on them and when I feel it is time (things improved) to play the whole of that album, I do that, hoping that now new tracks can go to Demo. Now, what I explicitly notice the past two weeks is that the reason new tracks go to Demo is because I like the beat. The rythm. The sweeping up sound.IOW, all the same : the foottapping factor. And clear to me (in aftermath) : previously those tracks did not go to Demo because that part lacked too much and of course no other good reasons for Demo existed as well.So this should be your answer.

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I appreciate the audio technicalities [...] or are we in for a totally new experience?

I like to combine the two because the latter is implied by the former. But the latter counts too for sure, although I can not say to what degree this depends on loudspeakers. I mean, my general consensus would be that mighty fast speakers (especially mid/high) are required to show what's suddenly in there, but I think this reason(ing) could be moot because I would have said similar a couple of years ago, while now all is 10 times faster. Yes, I said 10 times, and I just as well could have said 20. IOW, a speaker may be better (capable) in general and whatever it makes excel could be for the largest deal in the source. For example (now thinking bass because that is easier) when you'd have a nice sine of 50Hz and the driver can show that "undistored" up to 100dBSPL, it will not do that at all when the 50Hz is distorted to begin with and harmonics of 100Hz, 150Hz and 200Hz are in there (make up yourself of which level they are) and the 50Hz suddenly needs to play together with those other tones in the same driver, which is *always* more difficult than the one signal alone.This counts for a mid and a tweeter and everything, with the notice that music itself is a complex signal comprising of 1000s of frequencies (in the same driver). Adding 4000s of others (the distortions) is just not a wise thing to do. So that seems to (not) happen now and it is my general perception that all which previously smeared, now does not and it shows as "10 times faster". And this is no BS talk ... you can just hear the on/off sounds everywhere (say at a rate of 100s per second), which were not there at all before.

The gadget factor would be that deeper analysis could show that this "just happens" and is an enhancement factor like noise perceivedbly sharpens a photo. So what I myself wonder at stages is whether what I hear can be real (this is a quite interesting new dimension of this hobby) with always and ever the conclusion that it is real (further down the track the "hits" appear to be able to not show "sounds" around it etc. etc. etc.). The point here is that *all* is filled which such new sounds, and next to that you are d*mn sure that nobody heard it before, including the mixing engineer (or he wouldn't have let it through). Why am I (are you) so sure ? well, I never heard anything of it before and we did quite fine already.

In conclusion, I indeed think we are up to a totally new experience and this already starts at the drummer. So that alone implies an instrument - and merely a person - who is not guiding / determining the rythm (together with the bass guitarist) but who now most clearly shows that he/she too wants to have fun on his/her own instead of being precise with the beats. He/she has fill ins which are unique to him/her and you can suddenly not only hear but also see how the sticks are lifted, how high that is, how fast they drop and how movements are made on to the next tom.This plainly just was not there before.OK, so you can't imagine because you say it surely was there. Then wait ...